“Uriah S. (or Z.) GRAUNT—popular
poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces
of the United States of British America. Some
authors say flourished about A. D. 742; but the
learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a cotemporary
of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished
about A. D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan
war instead of before it. He wrote ‘Rock
me to Sleep, Mother.’”
These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.
Home, again! For the first time, in many weeks,
the ship’s entire family met and shook hands
on the quarter-deck. They had gathered from many
points of the compass and from many lands, but not
one was missing; there was no tale of sickness or
death among the flock to dampen the pleasure of the
reunion. Once more there was a full audience
on deck to listen to the sailors’ chorus as
they got the anchor up, and to wave an adieu to the
land as we sped away from Naples. The seats were
full at dinner again, the domino parties were complete,
and the life and bustle on the upper deck in the fine
moonlight at night was like old times—old
times that had been gone weeks only, but yet they
were weeks so crowded with incident, adventure and
excitement, that they seemed almost like years.
There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker
City. For once, her title was a misnomer.
At seven in the evening, with the western horizon
all golden from the sunken sun, and specked with distant
ships, the full moon sailing high over head, the dark
blue of the sea under foot, and a strange sort of
twilight affected by all these different lights and
colors around us and about us, we sighted superb Stromboli.
With what majesty the monarch held his lonely state
above the level sea! Distance clothed him in
a purple gloom, and added a veil of shimmering mist
that so softened his rugged features that we seemed
to see him through a web of silver gauze. His
torch was out; his fires were smoldering; a tall column
of smoke that rose up and lost itself in the growing
moonlight was all the sign he gave that he was a living
Autocrat of the Sea and not the spectre of a dead
one.
At two in the morning we swept through the Straits
of Messina, and so bright was the moonlight that Italy
on the one hand and Sicily on the other seemed almost
as distinctly visible as though we looked at them
from the middle of a street we were traversing.
The city of Messina, milk-white, and starred and
spangled all over with gaslights, was a fairy spectacle.
A great party of us were on deck smoking and making
a noise, and waiting to see famous Scylla and Charybdis.
And presently the Oracle stepped out with his eternal
spy-glass and squared himself on the deck like another
Colossus of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see
him abroad at such an hour. Nobody supposed
he cared anything about an old fable like that of
Scylla and Charybdis. One of the boys said:
